Madness and Bitter Fruit — Making Perry in the Shadow of May Hill

I got high by mistake while researching this article. Monstrously high. At the Ross on Wye Cider Festival, already drunk on cider and perry, its pear-based cousin, I took an edible without clocking what it was. I’m not a weed user, so had no tolerance to fall back on.

Sometime after the THC hit, I found myself along with two others in a nighttime pear orchard. Wrapped in its deep-columned darkness, we formed three darker pillars, a stone circle mimicking the trees that threw their gunmetal forms high into the air. A gray-lilac blanket draped across the treetops in which bright white stars burned and screwed.